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February 23, 2013

Interesting combine for Manti Te'o. As a middle-linebacker, he would be the center of the defense, typically calling signals for the defense and flowing to the ball or spying/shadowing the quarterback.

Can he do that while his teammates are joking about picking his girlfriend in the fantasy draft? That's what he has to convince GMs about, whether he can be taken seriously as a team leader after his gullibility and lack of full honesty was exposed.

Other positions wouldn't have quite that problem, but MLB is one position where leadership is part of the package. You can have a loopy corner, but as long as he stays on his man like stickum on Fred Biletnikoff, he'll be a valued part of the team. If a QB or middle-backer is a flake, he won't last long; Vince Young would be Exhibit 1 on that front.

Should that be enough to take Te'o from a top-five pick to a late-first rounder? That mock draft sends him to Baltimore to be Ray Lewis 2.0, which would work rather well, but I get the feeling that he'll be a better player than a late-first rounder.

Getting to start for the Super Bowl champs would be an advantage, but he'll be leaving quite a bit of salary on the table thanks to that drop in position.

I haven't been blogging much the past few months; Facebook seems to take the random blog post, since you can do quick-take posts there easier than via a blog with a post-to-Facebook button.

In addition, I've been fighting off underemployed depression. I've got time to blog but fight to have the energy to. In addition, I'm in something of a-pox-on-both-your-houses mode in politics, where folks fight over which cliff to drive off of.

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Pre-season box-scores are hard to track down, but MLB.com seems to have it covered. The Tigers got beat 10-3, but all of the runs were allowed by farm-hands. Sanchez pitched two shutout innings and closer-designate Rondon pitched a shutout inning, albeit with a walk, a hit and two strikeouts; the latter sounds like Papa Grande circa 2011 a bit too much, having an adventure before getting out without damage.

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Interesting piece on Ron Sider calling out the AARP for being unhelpful in the bigger-picture budget debate; some trimming of wealther-seniors' benefits might well be called for as part of a long-term budget solution, but special-interest groups don't get funds for supporting only slightly messing with their demographic. Your pro-choicers will lobby to kill 'em off at 8.999 months and the AARP will go to the mat to protect Bill Gates' Social Security check.

Sadly, it's a AmSpec piece in the "liberal who gets the big picture" mode. Sider's actually been looking after "the least of these" since Hector was a pup and he can see that the Sun City crowd is generally not part of them. I recall selling his books two decades ago when I ran the Cedar Campus bookstore; he's one of the guys who didn't check his theology at the door when he takes a liberal economic take.

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There has to be a pony somewhere in that massive road apple the Pistons dropped in Indy last night; Khris Middleton looking like an NBA three and Kravtzov getting a double-double and occasionally playing a gawky Drummond to a Bynum lob. Since the Pistons traded their two main small fowards, Middleton might get some playing time going forward.

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Very odd Johnny Football story; he can't make money off his nickname, but he can sue people who are and pocket the results of the suit with the NCAA's blessing. That might give him some pocket money until he starts playing on Sunday a year or two from now.

February 19, 2013

I'm not sure I'm seeing what the stock market is seeing. I haven't seen any major signs of improvement on either the domestic or international level and Washington is at a high level of disfunction, so I'm not seeing the rationale for a new market high.

I hope they're right. I don't see us as Greece at T-10Years as the nattering nabobs are wont to do, but I'm not seeing a lot of upward push for the rest of the decade.

Google hit the $800 a share level. One of their competitors are making hay over the concept that Google tailors the ads they show you based on what they know about you. That's a bad thing?

I'm supposed to appreciate ads for working Latinas or yet another dating site ad? I'd rather they target me with things I might be interested in rather than something J Random User would be interested in.

The one area that seems to fall flat is when they work on the location of your ISP. The two lamest concepts are (1) [Fill in city] mom gets rich running web site and (2) assuming since I'm from Michigan that I'm from metro Detroit.

On the first; anything that has Midland in the title gets put in my mental spam folder, along with any "one trick" to instant gratification. Plus, the Midland mom looked very much like the Lexington mom I recall from when I lived there.

On the second; It's an hour and a half to the northern suburbs of Detroit. I'm not going to be in the market for a exercise place or grocery store that far away.

Getting ads for a web site you just visited a bit ago might be a bit spooky, but it beats the heck out of yet another one trick to boosting your maleness.